A Sewing & Knitting Blog, Made in Birmingham, England

Embroidered art by Stewart Easton & a trip to the garden centre

Most Saturdays me and Phil go shopping in Birmingham, but this week we had a bit of a change.

First we went to the MAC (Midlands Arts Centre) to watch a screening of My Neighbour Totoro. We were supposed to be getting to the MAC in plenty of time prior to the screening to view the various current art exhibitions & have a stroll in the park where MAC is located. However, what actually happened was that we had a lie-in and ending up getting to the MAC with only enough time to grab a quick breakfast in the cafe and then dash into the screening. After Totoro we just had time to get a quick look at one of the exhibitions currently on at the MAC, Four Tragic Tales by Stewart Easton, before having to get back in the car and head to Coventry to collect some picture frames we’d had made.

A number of pieces in the Easton exhibition were embroidered, which made them particularly interesting to me. His technique is to digitally print onto fabric and then hand embroider elements of the image. It results in very professional and stylised works, and allowed him to achieve a very high level of detail in quite small pieces – which can be difficult (and certainly time consuming) through embroidery alone. I’m definitely going to give the technique a try myself.

Pictured below are two of the embroidered pieces, as well as an ink drawing from the exhibition.

Having travelled into Coventry to collect picture frames, me and Phil also popped to Ryton Gardens, to have a nose in the gardens and shop. I really want a wormery at the moment but was preventing from splurging on one today as they didn’t have any in stock. I think I may be best waiting until the winter is over before I buy one as I know worms aren’t too fond of the cold so won’t be composting very quickly at the moment anyway. Below are a few photos of the gardens at Ryton, mainly of features rather than plants as the gardens are inevitably a little bit bare at this time of year.